The Black Widow
by Araedia
Summary: -On Mrs. Zabini and her seven husbands, from Blaise's POV- People called her cold-blooded, conniving, a murderess. So did he. But he never knew whether to hate her or love her. A conundrum in life, as in death almost twenty years later. Oneshot.


**EDIT (12/5/11): This has now been to the beta and back. Also, Anonymous's comment made me realise that I really hadn't explained Mr. Zabini's death properly. It's still open to interpretation (who? when?), but slightly less ambiguous now, hopefully.**

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><p><strong>Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine.<strong>

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><p>The man walked briskly down the neglected road, trampling a new pathway through beds of nettles. As he reached his destination though, his steps faltered and for a moment, the barrier behind his dark eyes fell, leaving them open to emotion as they rested on the gates of the old manor house. It lay sprawling over several acres, memories of its former grandeur echoing in its darkened, broken visage. It was everything he remembered… and yet, wasn't. The perfectly trimmed gardens of his memories were overrun with weeds, the hedges had grown into twisted unrecognizable shapes and trees he remembered from his childhood were a choked, gnarled shadow of their former selves.<p>

With a bit of imagination, he could almost hear her carriage thundering up behind him, the horses' hooves striking the cobbled path.

_He was told that his father had been a brave man. That when the carriage arrived, there was nothing that could be done to staunch the bleeding, to repair the torso almost ripped in half._

_That it had been the only time when tears had been seen in her eyes._

He shook his head slightly, as if to drive away the memories. He touched the gates and immediately drew back with a muted hiss as his hand burned at the area of contact. It was no wonder that the Muggles thought the manor was haunted. If it did not give him, the rightful heir entry, what hope did a Muggle have?

With a movement so fast it was almost impossible to follow, he drew a knife from within his cloak and scored a line through his palm. The gates slid open smoothly at the touch of his blood and he entered noiselessly.

No matter how practiced he was at hiding his emotions behind a poker face, even he couldn't suppress a shiver at the house's malevolent aura. Yet, it held an irresistable attraction for him. After all, it was a place he had once called home.

_Half-formed memories of laughing, running through the mazes of bushes, being spun through the air by countless unremembered hands… and her smile._

The foyer was much as he remembered, unremarkable except for the dark stain on the Persian carpets. It looked fairly innocuous, but the image of how it had arrived there was permanently branded in his mind.

_He approached the sodden package apprehensively, fear rushing through his veins. At a touch of his wand, it fell open and a severed head bearing a grotesque smile rolled across to him, stopping at his feet._

_It felt like the demented smile was screaming an accusation at him. Why didn't you tell me?_

His footsteps echoed in the lonely hall. A bat's wings rustled in the dark ceilings. For a split second, he saw it as he had once known it – a place for endless revelry and dancing, women in flowing gowns twirling elegantly across the floor in time with the music, a place forever lighted up.

Then he blinked, and the illusion shattered; he was back to the present – to a long-forgotten altar of his past, seeing the dust motes swirl in random patterns, illuminated by a thin stream of light.

He wandered aimlessly through the cavernous rooms, finally stopping at the grand dining hall. It seemed frozen in time – the glassware set, napkins perfectly folded, candles mounted on stands… just waiting for guests to pour in – guests who would never arrive.

_Suddenly, he slumped forward, glass shattering as his head struck it. A shard of glass had flown up and suck to his forehead, but there was no blood. He was dead._

_He had looked uncertainly at her, only to see her lips curve in a slight smile. "Continue with your meal," was the only thing she said._

He reached out his slightly trembling hand to the back of the chair at the head of the table. Before he could bring himself to touch the ornately carved wood, he drew his hand back and walked out of the room abruptly, now heading towards the staircase leading up to the next floor.

As he walked up the wide stairway, he deliberately ignored the paintings lining the walls. He could feel _him_, _him_ and _him_ – he could feel _their_ eyes boring into his back, and it took every ounce of his willpower to not look back.

The next room he entered had been her bedroom. Her brushes were still laid out on her dressing table, awaiting an owner who would never have use of them. The bed was neatly made, the curtains drawn. If not for the thick layer of dust coating everything, he could almost expect to turn around and see her. He felt inexplicably like a child again, poking into her forbidden sanctum. He half-expected to hear her admonishments any moment.

_He didn't remember it, but he had heard whispers about her familiar – a black viper forever wrapped around her white arm. He heard tell that its deadly poison could not be traced by any spell known to wizardkind, but it was thought that a bite would result in a seizure and then death._

_He also heard that _he_ had succumbed to the same symptoms._

The wing that he next wandered into was a burnt-out husk of its former self. She had let it remain that way after the accident, as a permanent remainder of _him_.

_He remembered that night, when the Fiendfyre burnt so high that seemed like it would burn down the dark sky. The terrible beasts in the flames snarled and swiped at him, but she stood in front of him. He was safe._

_They had to leave _him_ behind in the house though, or so she told him._

There was only one room in the entire manor which had a view of the ocean. He walked towards the window, coming to a rest before it. His eyes followed the almost hypnotic rise and fall of the waves. The ocean was calm that day. On a stormy night though, the salty spray from the wild waves would fly into the room, splattering onto the window panes.

_The servants managed to retrieve the body and they brought it back – a limp, white thing, torn at several places on the sharp rocks when it had been thrown about by the waves – and laid it at her feet. She had looked dispassionately at it, and walked away._

He now stood before a familiar door. His slender fingers reached out and touched the name carved on it – his own name. The door gave way to his light touch, and he entered the room he had spent most of his childhood in, after more than twenty years.

Unlike the other rooms in this house, this was empty. Impersonal. Once, he had removed everything belonging to him and he had never since returned.

_His breaths came in short gasps as he forced himself under his bed. His eyes were wide and terrified as he saw the door to his room open and a pair of boots enter, followed by the now familiar smell of alcohol. He stifled his whimpers._

_What was his mother doing with such a horrible man? He was scared._

_A face peered under his bed. The bloodshot eyes met his, and the lips curved into an inebriated smile. The smile still remained as the head met the floor with a thunk. He stared in shock, still seeing the flash of green light striking the back of his head. Somehow, he scrambled out, to run to her and bury his face in her skirts._

_They never saw him again._

He was almost running now. The cold air almost seemed like a slap on the face as he finally stepped outside the house. His feet led him unconsciously past the crumbling remains through paths half-remembered. Ghosts of his past seemed to lurk behind every twisted shape, tantalizingly close, but just out of sight. Before he knew it, he had crossed an unseen line, stepping into the graveyard behind the house.

The graves had not been touched for years. They were overrun with grass and weeds, yet he could still make out the inscriptions on each of them. They were laid out in neat rows, starting from the latest to the earliest.

_Caradoc Montague  
><em>_1951 – 1996_

He had been wealthy in his own right, pureblood and generally considered a Slytherin loyalist. He had also been a spy for the Order of the Phoenix. It had been _purely_ accident, of course, that the Dark Lord had discovered his loyalties and then proceeded to torture his secrets out of him. His family had received his body in parts.

It was a funny coincidence that he had been exposed on the very evening when he had finally confessed his allegiance to the Order to his wife.

_Magnus Duvall  
><em>_1950 – 1993_

The world had called it a tragic accident – a brilliant wizard devoured by the flames of his own creation. The entire wing in which he had conducted his experiments was burnt down to the bare stone walls. Only the brave Mrs. Duvall had stopped the Fiendfyre from spreading to the rest of the house, but had unfortunately been widowed in the process.

He gave a bitter twisted smile. Why didn't anyone realize, he wondered, that Fiendfyre could only be controlled by its creator?

_Tristan Broderick  
><em>_1957 – 1990_

Dubbed an eccentric for his many odd ways, including an inexplicable love of sailing, he had taken it into his head to sail through a storm. His drowned body had washed up among the driftwood the next day. His wand was never found.

The last spell performed by Mrs. Broderick's wand had been '_Reducto'_. While it was later proved that she had, in fact, blasted open a jammed door, there were rumours that it could have also been used on the bottom of the boat.

_Augustus Lejueme  
><em>_1926 – 1988_

He had died at the dinner table. It was thought that he had died of an as-of-then unknown allergy to a certain species of mushroom, and his old age had certainly not helped matters.

Mrs. Lejueme, an expert potioneer (who had shown an especial affinity towards obscure poisons), was once again left a grieving widow.

_Hector Beaumont  
><em>_1948 – 1986_

A drunk for a husband was a burden and a great inconvenience, Mrs. Beaumont's friends recalled her saying. Conveniently, he disappeared one night and he was never seen again. After a year of waiting, he was finally declared dead by Mrs. Beaumont, who re-married after another year of mourning.

He though, knew what had ended Beaumont's life. It was a flash of green light.

_Wulfric Derwent  
><em>_1937 – 1982_

The death of Wulfric Derwent bamboozled everyone who came in contact with it. Every cell in his body was undamaged, his mind was intact, there were no poisons in his bloodstream. By every right, he should have been alive. But inexplicably, he was dead.

A trainee from St. Mungo's noticed a pair of puncture marks at his throat, almost covered completely by his folds of skin. It was dismissed as irrelevant to his death.

Gossips in town also noticed that Mrs. Derwent's infamous familiar, a black viper which was always wound around her arm like a second skin, was also missing.

_Aeneas Zabini  
><em>_1950 – 1981_

_Serafina Zabini*  
><em>_1953 – 1998_

The two graves stood side by side, apart from the rest. Their epitaphs matched, _"They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies."**_

He stood before the first gravestone silently, his head slightly bowed. This was, after all, his father's grave. His father, the only man his mother had ever loved. His father, the man who had given his life protecting his mother and him that one fateful night, not too long after the end of the First Wizarding War. When the world had given itself over to complete chaos and could no longer distinguish right from wrong.

He had been told that that evening, when she returned drenched in his blood, supporting his body in her arms - that evening was the first and only time Serafina Zabini had allowed herself to grieve in public.

"_There were so many who looked at me with lust in their eyes. There were many that looked upon me with fear. There were even those who looked at me with disgust._

_But there was only one who looked at me with love. And you… you remind me so very much of him."_

"Goodbye… Father."

He moved to the next. People would have called her cold-blooded, conniving, a murderess had they known all he knew about her. He remembered at least five of those deaths, he remembered things that no child should ever have had to see. And they were all because of her.

But he also remembered the many times when it had been him and her, when she stood before him, always protecting him. The warm smile that she had had only for him.

He never knew whether to hate her or love her. A conundrum in life, as in death almost twenty years later.

Blaise Zabini knelt at his mother's grave for an interminable period of time. When he got up, he conjured a thorny wreath of roses at her grave, charmed to live for a hundred years.

He turned around and walked away from the manor, this time forever.

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><p><em>Two years later…<em>

The townspeople looked on with breathless anticipation as the last wall of the cursed manor was finally broken down, and the foundations for a new group of apartment buildings finally began to be laid. Work on this had cost many men, all succumbing to fevered delirium, hitherto unknown diseases and even snake bite.

The graveyard though, they left untouched.

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><p>Years had passed by, and memories melted together enough that now the manor only remained as a faint impression in the minds of the old. It was universally acknowledged that while this location was excellent, there was something rather… unnerving about it. The graveyard, in particular held a mystery that many wondered about.<p>

While Serafina Zabini had died almost a century ago, there was still someone who placed a fresh wreath of roses on her grave. So many had spent nights on watch at her grave, yet no one had ever succeeded in seeing her mourner.

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><p><strong>AN: This oneshot came about because I was curious about the mysterious Mrs. Zabini, who, to quote HBP "was a famously beautiful witch who married seven times, each of her husbands dying mysteriously and leaving her mounds of gold". You may find tinges of 'Susanna's Seven Husbands' by Ruskin Bond, as well as 'Rebecca' by Daphne du Maurier in this.**

***Serafina means 'serpent' in Italian, or so Google tells me.**

****The words on the epitaph are by William Penn.**

**Lastly, this is the first thing I've written in a couple of months, so this may be slightly rusty. Do review. I'd like to know whether I've managed to pull this off as well as I believe I have.**


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